To others he was reticent, with a certain hauteur of timidity, avoiding society and public appearances to the day of his death.
"Now those are the facts about Foster.

They certainly do not describe the 'ne'er-do-well of a good family' who hung round barrooms, colored-minstrel haunts and theater entrances.

I can find only one incident to show that Foster ever went to hear his own songs sung in public.

He was essentially a solitary, who, while keenly observant of and entering sympathizingly into the facts of life, held himself aloof from immediate contact with its crowded stream.

He was solitary from sensitivity, not from bitterness or indifference.